In the last days of May (presumably, on May 28) 1947 thirty-seven-year-old Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) comes to Ramsdale (a small town in New England), falls in love with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze (Lolita's full name) and, a month later, marries Lolita's mother Charlotte. Ramsdale brings to mind Fuenteovejuna ("The Sheep Well," 1619), a play by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega (1562-1635). The title refers directly to a real Spanish village in the province of Córdoba, which serves as the setting for the story. The play is based on a real historical event that took place in the village on April 23, 1476. The villagers rebelled and killed their feudal lord, Commander Fernán Gómez de Guzmán, due to his horrific abuses, cruelty, and mistreatment of the local women. April 23 is VN's birthday. The Italian-born English poet Humbert Wolfe died on his fifty-fifth birthday (January 5, 1940). January 5 is Vera Nabokov's birthday. Volki i ovtsy (Wolves and Sheep, 1875) is a five-act play by Alexander Ostrovski (a Russian playwright, 1823-1886). Luch sveta v tyomnom tsarstve ("A Ray of Light in the Dark Kingdom," 1860), Dobrolyubov's article on Ostrovski's play Groza ("The Thunderstorm," 1859), brings to mind John Ray, Jr., the author of the foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript. By a ray of light Dobrolyubov (a radical critic, 1836-1861) means Katerina, a character in Ostrovski's play who asks "why don't people fly, like birds." Describing his reconciliation with Lolita, Humbert Humbert calls Lolita "my bird:"
“Look,” she said as she rode the bike beside me, one foot scraping the darkly glistening sidewalk, “look, I’ve decided something. I want to leave school. I hate that school. I hate the play, I really do! Never go back. Find another. Leave at once. Go for a long trip again. But this time we’ll go wherever I want, won’t we?”
I nodded. My Lolita.
“I choose? C’est entendu? ” she asked wobbling a little beside me. Used French only when she was a very good little girl.
“Okay. Entendu. Now hop-hop-hop, Lenore, or you’ll get soaked.” (A storm of sobs was filling my chest.)
She bared her teeth and after her adorable school-girl fashioned, leaned forward, and away she sped, my bird.
Miss Lester’s finely groomed hand held a porch-door open for a waddling old dog qui prenait son temps.
Lo was waiting for me near the ghostly birch tree.
“I am drenched,” she declared at the top of her voice. “Are you glad? To hell with the play! See what I mean?”
An invisible hag’s claw slammed down an upper-floor window.
In our hallway, ablaze with welcoming lights, my Lolita peeled off her sweater, shook her gemmed hair, stretched towards me two bare arms, raised one knee:
“Carry me upstairs, please. I feel sort of romantic tonight.”
It may interest physiologists to learn, at this point, that I have the ability - a most singular case, I presume - of shedding torrents of tears throughout the other tempest. (2.14)
On the other hand, Ovech'yi Vody (Sheep's Springs) is the village in Turgenev's story Dnevnik lishnego cheloveka ("The Diary of a Superfluous Man," 1850). The hero of Turgenev's story, Chulkaturin wants to know what kind of bird he was (chto ya byl za ptitsa):
Что я за человек?.. Мне могут заметить, что и этого никто не спрашивает, — согласен. Но ведь я умираю, ей-богу умираю, а перед смертью, право, кажется, простительно желание узнать, что, дескать, я был за птица?
What manner of man am I?... It may be observed that no one asks me that question admitted. But there, I'm dying, by Jove! I'm dying, and at the point of death I really think one may be excused a desire to find out what sort of a queer bird one really was after all.
A Russian writer, Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) lived with the family of Pauline Viardot-García (a French opera singer of Spanish descent, 1821-1910), "on the edge of someone else's nest."